The Ethernet networking protocol has become one of the most common networking protocols in use today. Due to the wide availability of Ethernet, and its large install base, Ethernet is generally able to provide a greater cost performance than other networking protocols. Accordingly, there has been a recent demand for implementations of Ethernet interfaces, such as Gigabit Ethernet interfaces, across a wide array of industries.
Gigabit Ethernet is capable of data transmission speeds of up to 1 Gigabit per second (Gbit/s) over four twisted pairs of wires. A twisted pair of wires, or a “twisted pair,” may refer to a type of cabling where two conductors of a single circuit are twisted together for purposes of cancelling out interference from external sources, such as crosstalk or electromagnetic interference (EMI). For example, each wire of the twisted pair may carry an equal and opposite signal relative to the other wire of the twisted pair, and a receiving device may determine the difference between the two received signals in order to identify and remove noise. In the physical layer defined for Gigabit Ethernet (GPHY), an eight bit byte of data is translated into four code symbols, each of which is simultaneously transmitted over one of the four twisted pairs. Thus, each twisted pair effectively operates as a channel that carries one of four code symbols for each eight bit byte of data that is transmitted. The four channels of the GPHY may be referred to as channels A-D. The GPHY may inherently mitigate the effects of error bursts since each of the four code symbols of a given eight bit byte of data is transmitted over a separate twisted pair. Thus, an error burst experienced by any one of the twisted pairs, such as due to EMI, should only effect one of the four code symbols of a given eight bit byte of data, and therefore the entire eight bit byte of data may be recoverable at the receiving device.